Happy father Mark Cavendish is determined to win the double

 
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If everything goes to plan Mark Cavendish will win Team GB’s first gold medal of the 2012 Olympics in the men’s cycling road race.

But for the fastest man on two wheels that will pale into insignificance compared with the feeling of becoming a father for the first time.

The 27-year-old faces the biggest summer of his career with the Tour de France, cycling’s 2,173-mile energy-sapping blue-riband event, finishing six days before he lines up for the Olympic road race.

Tomorrow Cavendish will officially be named in Team GB’s squad for the Games, kick-starting the countdown to a crucial few months for him and his family.

Cavendish and his model girlfriend Peta Todd became parents to Delilah in April. Todd is also mother to six-year-old Finnbar from a previous relationship. The athlete said: “It was wicked, the best day of my life. It was a long day but Peta had been through it before and knew what to do. I kind of followed her lead and that was that. It was amazing. Nothing comes close to the importance of that. And Delilah’s as good as gold. I know I’m very lucky.”

The pair met at a Help for Heroes charity event in Los Angeles two years ago, and he describes it as love at first sight, at least on his part. Todd took Delilah to watch her father compete in the Giro d’Italia last month. Cavendish won three stages and came within a point of taking the red jersey in the race’s points classification.

His recovery from the Giro has been something of a trial run for the Olympics to see how quickly he can get back to peak fitness from a three-week stage race in which he can expect to shed 2.5kg in weight.

A nutritionist from Team Sky lived with him for a week to ensure he had the right diet in place to gain the necessary weight and get back in shape. He said: “I was really skinny after the Giro and my body had been eaten away. I was sleeping about 16 hours a day and walking up the stairs would leave me sweating.”

Asked whether the Tour or Olympics matters more, Cavendish says the former is his job while the Olympics is “about being as patriotic as hell”. But he is determined to ride the Tour to the finish on the Champs-Élysées and defend his green jersey for the race’s leading sprinter. “I can’t hold back on the Tour de France,” he says. “It’s the biggest bike race in the world. I want to win both.”

Cavendish, from the Isle of Man, rode through Regent’s Park recently with Kelly Brook and more than 150 cyclists as part of Sky Ride, a campaign to promote cycling in the UK. goskyride.com

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